“Well, let them! Let them!” said Grushenka sententiously, with an ecstatic expression on her face. “When they do get a day to enjoy themselves, why shouldn’t folks be happy?”
Kalganov looked as though he had been besmirched with dirt.
“It’s swinish, all this peasant foolery,” he murmured, moving away; “it’s the game they play when it’s light all night in summer.”
He particularly disliked one “new” song to a jaunty dance‐tune. It described how a gentleman came and tried his luck with the girls, to see whether they would love him:
The master came to try the girls:
Would they love him, would they not?
But the girls could not love the master:
He would beat me cruelly
And such love won’t do for me.
Then a gypsy comes along and he, too, tries:
The gypsy came to try the girls:
Would they love him, would they not?
But they couldn’t love the gypsy either: